Photographing Armour

I am sure that many photographers will attest to the fact that photographing shiny objects is a pain. I got horrible results until a professional automobile photographer gave me a few tips.

I now try to avoid all direct lighting and rely only on reflections. This CG illustration shows the approximate lighting setup I used to take the Gothic Armour photo seen in my gallery [link]

Though the lighting here shows the approximate angles and overall illumination this illustration is a bit of a simplification. In actuality I believe I used 12 lights and took 3 exposures, moving the lights slightly between exposures.

The 3 images then were taken into Photoshop and layered where I could pick and choose lighting for each area. This allowed me to have multi-exposures where I needed more light and mask out any hot spots. Thanks to my friend Brian [link] for that idea.